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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30076683">dreamquel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/giaucherie/pseuds/giaucherie'>giaucherie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MASH (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Gen, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Period-Typical Homophobia, Serious Injuries, Symbolism, episode 8x22 dreams my beloved, the prequel gang gets their shot at oddly traumatic dreams!, very very loosely implied bj/hawkeye + trapper/hawkeye</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:35:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30076683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/giaucherie/pseuds/giaucherie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You hit the sack so fast it’s as if someone dropped a bag of rocks on your skull, knocking you out instantly. You barely have time to think before you succumb to the incessant tug of sleep, feeling the hard cot, and your aching body, dissolve into a warm light. You let it pull you along. Why not? It’s not as if you have anywhere to be.<br/>______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________</p><p>i absolutely adore 'dreams,' and clearly hold it in the top spot for my most beloved mash episode, so when i was made to consider (by one of my uquiz takers) how dreams could have been different with trapper, henry, frank and radar, i had to write a small dream vignette for each of them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dreamquel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Trapper</strong>
</p><p>You hit the sack so fast it’s as if someone dropped a bag of rocks on your skull, knocking you out instantly. You barely have time to think before you succumb to the incessant tug of sleep, feeling the hard cot, and your aching body, dissolve into a warm light. You let it pull you along. Why not? It’s not as if you have anywhere to be. </p><p>You follow this honeyed trickle of gold through the grey fog in your mind, and slowly, a shape materializes out of the haze. A bright, familiar shape, a beacon of hope. A slightly crumbling brownstone, warm light spilling outwards from every half drawn window, a path smashed through the petunias framing the steps by tiny feet.</p><p>You think you hear faint strains of music coming from inside, but it’s hard to tell; everything in this world sounds hollow and strange, yet there’s something achingly familiar about it. You think you could die happy simply collapsing in the bed of crushed petunias.</p><p>You drift towards the door, turning the handle, finding it unlocked. <em> Louise! </em> you want to cry, <em> Girls! I’m home! </em> but not a single sound comes out. </p><p>That’s strange, talking has never been difficult for you before. Usually words just roll off your tongue without a second thought. You try again, but no sound comes out. It’s not that your throat is caught, or that your mouth is blocked, the words simply flicker out and die before they can even produce a sound.</p><p>No matter. You’re sure this will pass. </p><p>You float into the kitchen, sure you’ll find Louise preparing dinner there, but the room is empty. You stand still, hoping she’ll walk in and you can surprise her, but she doesn’t enter. </p><p>Suddenly, you hear the faintest cry from above. You follow the sound up the stairs, the clunk of your boots muffled by the ether surrounding you like a cocoon. </p><p>You silently twist open the door to your bedroom. Of <em> course </em>, your bedroom. You’ve come home at last and Louise is waiting for you, just as she promised she would.</p><p><em> Hiya, honey </em>, you prepare to murmur, a crooked grin sliding across your face, but once again the words are dashed from your lips before they can form.</p><p>Louise is sitting on the bed, a glint of metal illuminated in her hand. She’s weeping, the moonlight casting strange patterns across her face. You want to go to her, to wipe away her tears, to comfort her and tell her everything is alright, but you can’t move. Your feet are stuck to the floor. As you watch, horrified, Louise holds up the item in her hand. A pair of dog tags.</p><p>You can’t read what they say, but you have the most horrifying, sinking feeling in your stomach. Louise’s soft sobs subside, and with a flash of fury, she pitches the dog tags across the room, the chain clattering at your feet. Some magnetic force draws your gaze downwards, and you can barely bear to read the engraved name.</p><p>
  <em>John McIntyre. </em>
</p><p>“Why?” chokes out Louise in a strangled whisper, just as you reach down for the tags. As soon as your hand connects with the metal, you are plunged through the floor and your world goes dim.</p><p><em> Louise! </em>you try and scream into the darkness, but it is too late. You’ve been dumped unceremoniously in your living room, and as you get up and dust yourself off, looking frantically around for the staircase, you hear the faint strains of a record once again. As you turn around, two men materialize on your couch.</p><p>The first man is long and lanky, with wavy blonde hair and an atrocious mustache. You’ve never seen him before in your life, yet you feel an odd sort of connection to him, like in a different situation, you could have become very good friends. This man is rubbing the back of another man, who is sitting hunched over and shaking with sobs, and the gesture is so intimate it makes your teeth clench.</p><p><em> Louise! </em> you want to cry out. You want to see your wife instead of these unfamiliar men, you want to find out what you did, and you want to be the one rubbing <em> her </em> back until she knows everything is alright. The desire disappears as soon as the other man sits up. </p><p>This man’s violently blue eyes are watery and red, his salt-and-pepper hair disheveled, his already-terrible posture contorted into something concerningly question-mark like. As you watch, horrified, Hawkeye Pierce, your best friend, unclenches his hands to reveal a pair of dog tags glinting in the soft light of the living room. You don’t need to look at them to know what they say. You don’t need to look at them to know what you wish you’d said.</p><p>You want to go to him, you want to say something to him, but you can’t move. Hawkeye is weeping, the strange man is steadying him, and your dog tags are in his hands.</p><p>“Why?” Hawkeye chokes out, and the other man just shakes his head, his sad turquoise eyes filling with pity. The dog tags slip out of Hawkeye’s hands, and he turns to embrace his partner, pressing his face into the man’s neck.</p><p>You reach down to grab the plates, but as soon as your hand connects with the chain, the house starts shaking around you. The strange mist, the hollowness, the odd sense of lightness in your body are all beginning to disappear, as though something is pulling you back from this world of sorrow and ether.</p><p>Then, with a gasp, you come alive, blinking in the bright lights of pre-op. Hawkeye is standing over you with tired eyes, shaking you awake to take the next shift. </p><p>“You got a reason for that, Trap?” he teases with a tired smile, motioning with his chin, “Got an army sweetheart I don’t know about?”</p><p>You look down and realize your hands are clenched around a pair of dog tags, the edges digging into the soft part of your palm. You flash Hawkeye a flirtatious smirk, hoping he can’t tell you’re faking it. As Hawkeye stretches out on the cot you just vacated, you walk away, hunched over to hide what the tags say, as if he’s going to read them over your shoulder. </p><p>You don’t say what you want to say to him. You don’t mention the strange man, whose presence feels as potent as it did in the dream, as though this man is watching your every move, waiting for you to screw up so he can take your place.</p><p>You carefully pull your hand away from the engraved name, and your heart drops into your stomach as you read the tags you’ve been clutching for hours.</p><p>
  <em> John McIntyre. </em>
</p><p>The tags clatter to the floor, but you don’t hear a sound.</p><p> </p><p>__________________________________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Henry</strong>
</p><p>As soon as you get out of OR, you head for your office, not bothering to change out of your scrubs, even though the white is now stained a rusty red from hours of bloody work. You just want a drink, preferably back in the States, in your favorite sports bar, but cheap scotch from your liquor cabinet is as good as it’s going to get right now. </p><p>You pour yourself a generous serving. Hell’s bells, you deserve it, you just spent the better part of a day elbow deep in guts and blood. You down a glass and pour yourself another, sinking down into your office chair. </p><p>You sigh, laying your head down on your desk, feeling your bones crack as you try and get settled. You’re getting too old for this, you think, as sleep comes to wash you away.</p><p>You awake knee-deep in a river, the chill of the water sending slight shocks through even the thick rubber of your galoshes. You feel your hands grasping, pulling, sending themselves into a flurry of movement, and then you’re reeling in the largest bass you’ve ever seen.</p><p>You wade back towards land, the bass dangling from your line. Lorraine is sitting on the shore, a pile of fish next to her, her gingham dress fanned out across the soft green grass. You look up, and see the kids chasing each other through the trees, squealing and yelling.</p><p>Lorraine gives you a soft smile, and you bend towards her, legs still in the water, to give her a quick peck on the cheek. She turns her head at the last second, and your friendly cheek peck turns into one that’s more on the corner of the mouth. Just as she likes it.</p><p>Lorraine hands you a sandwich, and, out of habit, you peek inside. Corned beef. You grin at her, and wade back into the water, preparing to cast your line yet again. The line disappears soundlessly beneath the murky surface of the river, as a light fog begins to roll in.</p><p><em> Unusual for Illinois </em> , you call back light-heartedly, getting a light hum of assent in return. The kids are still shrieking with laughter behind you, and you can hear their teasing calls of <em> You’re it! </em> and <em> That’s not fair! </em></p><p>A pull on your line distracts you, and you quickly swallow the last bite of sandwich, desperately trying to reel in this fish. Whatever it is, it’s strong, and the thickening fog doesn’t make it any easier to track its movement. You pull on your line until your hands are red and raw, and just as you’re about to give up and cut the line, you feel it give the tiniest bit of slack.</p><p>You desperately reel in the cable, feeling the weight at the end come towards you, almost laughing with delight. You’re going to have a feast tonight; you can almost taste Lorraine’s crispy fried fish, drizzled over with lemon. The line is giving, giving, giving, and with a mighty tug, the unlucky victim on the end flies onto the shore.</p><p>You turn around in excitement, expecting a bass so large it could pay off your mortgage, but something strange has happened to the world around you. You realize there is no movement except that of your own body, wading through the river. The squeals of your children have cut off. The water doesn’t even ripple as you push your way to shore. </p><p>You think you see Lorraine’s gingham dress up ahead, and clamber out onto the shore, the water stuck to your boots like glue, for even the droplets refuse to fall.</p><p><em> Lorraine, honey, </em> you call good-naturedly, but she doesn’t respond. You grin and shake your head, sidling up towards the picnic blanket where a bright spot of red checked print is in plain view. Instantly, you feel a jolt of horror radiate through your body.</p><p>A wounded soldier lays panting on top of a crumpled, bloodied gingham dress. The soldier motions for you weakly, gesturing towards his wounds. There are so many of them you don’t know where to start. </p><p>You kneel besides the soldier, shoving down the sick feeling of shock trying to settle into your bones, and reach into your vest, praying for bandages. When the prayer doesn’t work, you turn to the dress lying in the grass, and begin wildly ripping it into shreds for bandages. With every new tear of the fabric, the soldier winces, and you feel a little more like sobbing; all you want to do is save this man and move on, move away, go home and have Lorraine’s fried fish and a kiss on the corner of the mouth. </p><p>You shuffle towards the soldier with a fistful of frayed gingham in your hand, preparing to bandage his head wound first. As you lift off the man’s helmet, a mess of muddied, bloodied blonde hair spills out, and you realize the soldier isn’t a man at all.</p><p><em> Lorraine? </em> you sob, scrubbing away the streaks of dirt obscuring her beautiful features. <em> Lorraine, what do you think you’re doing? </em>you plead.</p><p><em> You caught me, Henry, </em>she responds weakly, and delicately pulls a fish hook out of her mouth, depositing it into your palm with frail, shaky hands. She is the only other thing around you that is moving, and you can tell she’s losing strength quickly.</p><p>You stop thinking, your brain shifting into autopilot as you bandage every last area of Lorraine’s body with the shreds of her dress so roughly ripped apart. You know they aren’t going to hold, but you can’t help but try anyways, pressing back tears as you watch patches of scarlet bloom on the delicate fabric. </p><p><em> If you hadn’t baited me, Henry, I wouldn’t be here </em>, a voice scolds in your head, but Lorraine’s lips aren’t moving. You’ve used up all of the gingham and you sit by her side helplessly, unsure of what to do next. You want to operate, but your hands don’t seem to know what they’re doing, and you can’t seem to remember how to identify her wounds.</p><p>Lorraine shifts towards you with great effort, leaning up and pressing her lips to the corner of your mouth. You can taste blood, dirt, and grief in her kiss.</p><p>She slumps back down onto the grass and in the blink of an eye, she disappears. The only thing left of her is a bloody strip of gingham lying limply on the grass and a grit of dirt on the corner of your mouth. You feel your presence leave your body, and watch yourself stride jerkily towards the water, the grass steady under your feet, the river as still as if it were dead. You throw something in, and then you are a fish hook, glinting silver in the sun as you slowly sink into the depths below. Sinking, sinking, down, down, down...</p><p> </p><p>“Uh, Colonel Blake, sir? Colonel? Sir?” </p><p>To the surprise of the corporal in front of you, you shoot out of your chair, trying desperately to reverse the sinking feeling.</p><p>“Colonel, are you all right?” Radar asks, clearly horrified.</p><p>You blink. Shake your head. Then catch a glimpse of the world outside your office window.</p><p>The leaves are blowing on the trees and ambulances are churning up dirt. Lorraine’s pictures with the kids are smiling up at you on your desk, as pressed and perfect as ever.</p><p>“Yeah,” you hear yourself murmur. “Just forgot where I was for a moment.”</p><p>You’re solid, the world is solid, your family is solid, yet you can’t help but feel that the minute you re-enter OR, you’re going to sink again, and this time you won’t come back up.</p><p>Sinking, sinking, down, down, down...</p><p> </p><p>__________________________________________</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Frank</strong> </p><p>The minute you’re offered a break, you’re about ready to sprint out of the operating room, but instead opt for a semi-proud speed-march, John Philip Sousa ringing through your head. You stretch out on a cot in pre-op, right next to a wounded boy you don’t bother to introduce yourself to, closing your eyes in delicious anticipation of sleep. Pierce and Hunnicutt could act as heroic as they pleased, turning down rest shifts to keep working, but <em>you</em>?</p><p>You are sitting at a desk too cramped, too hard, too written over with vulgar phrases from those who sat there before you. Up at the front of the room, Mrs. Smith is droning on and on about variables and how to find the <em> x </em>. You can feel yourself nodding off into sleep, the corners of the desk cutting into your legs, hands absentmindedly tracing along the deep scars of a pencil ingrained into the wood. Then, a sharp tug on your collar jerks you awake. </p><p>“Hey, Burns!” </p><p>You flail about in surprise, whirling around to face the perpetrator.</p><p>“Why, you-” you snarl, and then your mouth snaps shut like a bear trap. The perpetrator is George Howard, and the last time you’d got on his bad side, your books had ended up inside a toilet and your head inside a locker.</p><p>“Got something to say to me, Burns?” Howard leers, showing off a mouthful of crooked teeth.</p><p>“No.” You try and turn around, but Howard grabs your collar once more, yanking you back so hard the fabric smolders against your throat. Up at the front, Mrs. Smith is explaining why a <em> y </em> is sometimes used when there’s already an <em> x </em>.</p><p>“What do <em> you </em> want, Howard?” you choke out, trying to emulate the tough guy voice of John Wayne. The fabric is so tight against your throat you can practically feel the blood red line forming across your Adam’s apple.</p><p>“I saw you yesterday.” Howard lowers his voice menacingly, “Behind the school.”</p><p>Your heart drops into your stomach as he tightens his grip. You gasp for air as the world wavers around you. The <em> x </em> , the <em> y </em>, and how they add up are blurring into inky streaks before your eyes. </p><p>Then, just like that, Howard releases you. You slump against the back of your chair, relishing in the rush of sweet air into your lungs, but the torture isn’t done yet. You didn’t think it would be.</p><p>“I saw you with <em> Paul Yardley </em>,” Howard continues mockingly. </p><p>Paul Yardley is a notorious name around school. Paul Yardley, who talks with his hands, flutters his eyelashes and sings baritone in the school musical. Paul Yardley, who changes alone in the locker room, who doesn’t wrestle in physical education, who always has a bit of a blush to his cheeks. Paul Yardley, who was with you behind the school yesterday.</p><p>“We were only swapping pencils,” you respond snappishly, trying to turn back around. After all, that’s <em> all </em> it was.</p><p>“Oh, I bet you <em> were </em> swapping pencils,” Howard responds, a dark undertone to his voice. “That’s all you fruits ever do.”</p><p>You feel a flash of hot anger spike through your body, and then your fist is in motion, swinging towards Howard’s face. Howard catches it in mid-air.</p><p>“Gentlemen, what is going on back there?” The stern tone of Mrs. Smith breaks through the haze of rage clouding your mind.</p><p>“Oh, Mrs. Smith, Frank is just holding my hand,” Howard calls out, putting on an airy, lisp-y voice. “Didn’t you hear his proposal?”</p><p>The rest of the boys in the class laugh, and you know they’re laughing at you, not with you. Everything rings hollow in your ears as Mrs. Smith sighs and turns back to her lesson.</p><p>“Got anything to say for yourself, Burns?” Howard hisses, tightening his vice-like grip on your wrist. A million things to say run through your mind, but you’re so tired of being laughed at. So tired of being an outsider, of never being liked. So tired of being Ferret Face Burns who gets caught behind the school with Paul Yardley.</p><p>You break your wrist out of Howard’s grip and scoff, “As if I would ever hang around with that <em> degenerate </em>. I was only trying to catch him doing-” </p><p>You spit out the next words as if they leave a bad taste in your mouth, “<em> -whatever </em> guys like <em> him </em> do.”</p><p>Howard looks pleased with himself, and turns back to his algebra. You breathe a sigh of relief and move to turn forward, but a strangled sound to your left makes you twist around in your seat.</p><p>Paul Yardley is sitting a few feet away from you, with two black eyes and a bandaged hand, hunched over like he’s been punched in the gut. He probably has been. Paul is quietly crying as you look over, but when you lock eyes, his turn to steel, and you know you’ve just lost the only friend you have at this school.</p><p><em> Tough luck, </em> you sneer in your head, <em> You’re better off not associating with that filth. </em></p><p>But you can feel your hand shaking as you pick up your pencil to solve for <em> x </em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Frank… oh, Franky-Poo,” a soft voice coos in your ear, and your first thought is unspeakable<em> . </em> You shake the sleep out of your eyes, and hazy in the lens of a dream is a man who’s talking with his hands, fluttering his eyelashes and humming the first couple bars of <em> Moonlight Serenade.  </em></p><p>“Finally, my darling, you awake!” the figure cries, dramatically flinging his arms wide. “And you’re needed in post-op, on the double!”</p><p>“Oh, can the chatter, Pierce,” you growl, taking extra care to shove the man aside as you pry yourself off the board you’ve been sleeping on. “You’re disgraceful.”</p><p>“Takes a disgrace to know a disgrace!” Pierce responds with mock cheer, the bags under his eyes as dark as if someone had socked him straight on, hunched and twisted from hours spent  bent over an operating table.</p><p>You push open the door to post-op, hoping to get away from Pierce and his <em>flamboyancy</em>, but as you extend your arm, you can feel your hand shaking. </p><p>Just as it was all those years ago. </p><p> </p><p>__________________________________________</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Radar</strong>
</p><p>You flop down onto the edge of your cot, reluctantly removing your eyeglasses. You give the lenses a few half-hearted swipes with your sleeve, but it just seems to smear the dirt even more, so you hang them on the wall, and pull the covers over your head. Hawkeye had practically hauled you into the office insisting it was your turn to take a break, and you knew if you didn’t cooperate, you’d probably “accidentally” end up under anesthesia.</p><p>You sigh, and close your eyes, vowing to wake up the moment somebody needs you. You drift off into a light sleep, the sounds of traffic in-and-out of the office blurring together as your mind slows.</p><p>A garbled sound is making its way into your consciousness. Louder, louder, louder, until someone is shaking you awake and you come alive with a start, looking around wildly. Standing in front of you is Klinger, in full fatigues and a pair of glittery earrings, saluting with a ferocity like you’ve never seen before.</p><p>“My apologies SIR!” Klinger shouts, “But I had to wake you and tell you that there are wounded in the compound, SIR!”</p><p>“Aww, cut that out Klinger,” you groan, fumbling around for your glasses. Your hand hits a bottle on the desk in front of you, and you pick it up, only to realize it’s a half-empty bottle of Grape NeHi. Klinger shakes his head at you sadly.</p><p>“It’s tough at the top, eh, boss?”</p><p>
  <em> Boss? </em>
</p><p>You fumble through the desk for the mirror you know the Colonel keeps, and when you pull it out to take a look, your eyes nearly pop out of your head. You look <em> rugged </em> , you look <em> mature </em> , and aren't those <em> eagles </em> on your lapels? And aren’t you sitting in the Colonel’s chair in the Colonel’s <em> office </em>?</p><p>“Permission to assist with triage, Colonel O’Reilly, SIR!” Klinger shouts.</p><p>“Col- Colonel O’Reilly?” you ask in disbelief, running a hand over your arm, feeling an absence of stripes.</p><p>“SIR, that is your name, SIR!” Klinger commands, and now you’re really getting sick of this.</p><p>“Dismissed,” you sigh, shoving on your glasses as Klinger does a sharp about-face and leaves. You move to follow him out, but before you leave, you pick up the Grape NeHi and take a sniff. Whatever is inside is definitely <em> not </em> NeHi.</p><p>You can hear ambulances churning through the compound, and with a grimace, you take a swig from the bottle, feeling the liquid burn as it traces its way down your throat. Then, you’re bursting through the doors in OR, gloved and scrubbed.</p><p>A corpsman slides a patient in front of you and is gone before you can explain that you’ve never done this before. As the door swings shut behind him, OR is plunged into a deafening silence. It’s just you, your patient, and your scalpel.</p><p>You feel jittery, hands shaking like they did when you had to tell Major Burns a shipment was intercepted, or make a late night telephone call at the screamed request of Major Houlihan. You don’t know where to start. </p><p>You lift up the sheet decisively, hoping that will give you insight on how to operate. As the blank sheet crumples to the ground, snake-like in its glide off the table, you peer down at the patient...</p><p>...And immediately let out a scream muffled by the blackness of the room, leaping backwards and colliding with an instrument tray, a shower of silver tools raining through the air, clattering sharply to the ground. The sound echoes through the darkness that had seemed so stifling just moments before, and you take shuddering breaths, digging the heels of your hand into your eyes, trying to wipe away the imagery of Hawkeye Pierce lying unconscious on the table. There’s not a mark on him, but he’s drawing shallow breaths you know you can’t fix with a phone call or a requisition form.</p><p>You feel tears slip out of your eyes and curse yourself furiously. You <em> have </em> to fix Hawkeye. If you could fix anything as a corporal, you better do it twice as well as a colonel. </p><p>You steel your nerves and move towards the table. You stare at Hawkeye’s peaceful face, and just as you’re thinking that you can get through this, that you can heal him, he awakes with a gasp, face twisted in pain, his eyes electric like blue currents. </p><p>You screw your eyes shut, trying to stop the pounding in your chest, but when your eyes open, Hawkeye has morphed into BJ, whose once-calm ocean blue eyes are now filled with fear and pain. Then BJ becomes Colonel Potter taking shallow, rattling breaths, and Colonel Potter becomes Colonel Blake, his body still and cold and unable to be revived. </p><p>You feel yourself sobbing, unable to take control, the world spiraling out of your grasp. You rip the eagles off your lapels, and throw them as far as you can, cursing the promotion that made you useless. You see twin sparks burst in the darkness, and then thick silver flames are circling around you and your table, ice cold and steely like the eyes of the eagles once on your collar. </p><p>You can’t escape, and you don’t want to escape. Not if you can’t help the unit, not if you’re going to remain a colonel, not if you’re going to have to admit that you couldn’t fix Hawkeye, or BJ, or Colonel Potter, or Henry. </p><p>The flames begin to draw in closer, but you refuse to move, sitting underneath the bare operating table, tears cooling on your face in sticky tracks. You can feel the frostbitten cold moving in, and you clutch the metal legs of the table, but still you do not move.</p><p>A bright blast of air hits you in the face, freezing the paths made by tears and you want to cry, to scream, to run a fever, even if just to warm up again.</p><p>“Son, you alright?”</p><p>A concerned voice is weaving its way through the flames, gruff and sweet, and full of worry.</p><p>“Radar?”</p><p>“Yes, sir!” you gasp, the first words you’ve spoken since you’d arrived in OR cutting through the band of silver and casting you into light, Colonel Potter’s frowning face looming above you.</p><p>“I’m sorry to wake you, son, but I’m gonna need you to get on the horn to ICOR and tell ‘em our supply line’s been cut. Make sure to let them know we need another shipment of penicillin, on the double!”</p><p>“Yes, sir!” you repeat, absentmindedly running your fingers over your stripes. That’s not going to be too hard, swap a couple cases of spam for a couple cases of canned corn, and <em> that’s </em> enough to buy a couple weeks’ supply of penicillin on the black market. This is something you can fix. This is something you can mend.</p><p>You slowly make your way to the phone, shaking off the remnants of sleep, and as you’re sitting down to operate the switchboard, you hear strains of singing from the other room.</p><p>Hawkeye’s tired baritone weaves through muffled voices like a river, and you can hear the song he’s singing, plain as day.</p><p>
  <em> “Things never are as bad as they seem...so dream, dream, dream…” </em>
</p><p>“Hello, Sparky?” you sputter as the phone connects, tear tracks sticky on your face. “Yeah, I’m alright, what’s <em> that </em> supposed to mean?”</p><p>Sparky can’t hear Hawkeye, and Sparky can’t see you wipe your tears on your sleeve.</p><p>“Listen, I gotta couple things up for trade…”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>shout out to my uquiz taker who commented this in the free-response: "i wonder what dreams henry, trapper, and frank would have had if they'd been in this season" - you made me go absolutely insane over this concept, trying to work out each of these character's fears, flaws and what they would dream about. it was especially trying to incorporate how each of them would end up alone, and how i could show that dreamy, hazy quality the episode has through my writing, but i'm pretty proud of the end result! if you don't want a couple long notes on the dreams i crafted, don't read on :)</p><p>1. i thought it would be interesting to give trapper and henry similar dreams at the beginning- with the odd sense of the world, and the desire to be with their own families, but i wanted to give each dream a special twist of its own. it gave me immense satisfaction writing bj into trapper's dream as a sort of "unknown presence" who sticks with trapper, because that's essentially the reverse of trapper's shadow being constantly cast across bj in the series. i also just thought it was funny to make trapper's first thought about him "oh, we should be friends" while bj would probably hit trapper with his car the minute he knew who he was. because henry and trapper are not as fleshed-out, unlike all the characters in the dreams episode, i had to fill in the blanks a little while trying to remain in "their" point of view- hopefully it came across that way!</p><p>2. i didn't think it was right to give frank a proper dream, because in the context of the show, frank is a wholly unimaginative, literal character, and to give him a fantastical dream keeping with the theme of the episode, it just didn't feel accurate to his character. so i opted to give him a memory, knowing that often, reliving a memory can be just as painful as a strange dream or nightmare. however, do note i am not trying to make frank a sympathetic character, because he isn't one and shouldn't be considered as such; i just had an idea spring from one of the off-hand jokes frank said in one of the first seasons, and thought it would be interesting to explore how he carried a memory like that through his life, and into his canonical character and relationships.</p><p>3. radar's dream was the one i had the most trouble writing because radar's character was not always one of immense depth, and his flaws were not as poignant of those of, say, hawkeye and bj. however, i thought it would be interesting to explore the fact that radar is often considered the "fix it" of the unit, and put him in a situation where he simply can't "fix it" anymore. i think allowing him to mature, even briefly, was kind of necessary for him to be a part of the dreams 'episode.'</p><p>if you've made it through my tedious explanations, thank you for reading, and comments and kudos are always appreciated! come chat with me on tumblr @giaucherie, i'd love to talk! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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